A Debate Over Men Working in Child Care

By now I imagine Dianne Klein has had a number of responses to her column (Jan. 21). I wonder how many are the kind of backlash that Dana Parsons authored in his column Jan. 28 and how many are in support of her view. It takes real courage to write what she wrote and I applaud her for it. I think she is listening to her deep self that tells her the truth. I would title her column “Instinct (or Intuition or Wisdom) Beats Logic.” Anything can be explained by logic--from Hitler’s Holocaust to hurting children “for their own good.” Logic devoid of emotion, devoid of that knowing that transcends all the so-called “rational” arguments is a logic that I do not trust.

It seems logical to me that if a gender group is responsible for a large majority of molestation of children, I can reduce the odds of my child being molested if I keep her away from that gender group as much as possible. I would even go a step further and tell mothers to be very, very careful with their husbands, male relatives and male friends.

Most molestation is perpetrated by men, and it is usually someone known to the child. There are many reasons for this. At the core of abuse by males is that males are trained to view adoring, innocent, helpless, passive individuals as sexual objects. Women are trained to be such objects and children are such simply because of their size and their innate innocence.

For the past five years, I have worked almost exclusively with survivors of childhood abuse. In all that time, I have run across only two clients who were sexually abused by women out of the scores of people I have treated. That is my random sample. That is what convinced me to support women to be very careful with their children around men.

ROSEMARY L’ESPRIT

Santa Ana